Once More Unto the Breach, Dear Friends

It’s election season, y’all, but as I peck out those words, it occurs to me that it’s pretty much always election season anymore. And we’ve been giving you an awful lot of news and analysis rooted in that most basic of civic duties on our show recently: candidate interviews, polling breakdowns and prognostications, oh my! 

It makes sense, I s’pose, what with primary Election Day hovering and whirring like some state-sized drone over the discourse. (That’d be June 2.) Elections are part of the bread and butter for New Mexico in Focus, and they do, as the saying goes, have consequences. 

But this week, we offer you a brief respite in the form of a good, old-fashioned In Focus whiparound. And so, to quote The Bard, “once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more” — with your favorite weekly news program… 

We begin with an update on — and some pushback against — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s longstanding effort to expand the use of fracking wastewater beyond the oil fields. The state Water Quality Control Commission has taken another step to that end, and Tannis Fox of the Western Environmental Law Center drops by to explain the opposition. 

Next, NMiF reporter Cailley Chella brings you the story of several National Hispanic Cultural Center workers who recently struck a blow against the empire in their fight for labor rights. They’d been misclassified as “temporary” employees for years, but the state labor board has opened the door for them to join a union. 

Then it’s on to Democratic state Sen. Antonio “Moe” Maestas of Albuquerque to walk us through the mire in which the New Mexico Law Enforcement Academy Certification Board now finds itself. Maestas sponsored a bill in 2023 to fix the long-troubled agency that oversees training, certification and misconduct investigations for cops across the state. Things are not going as planned, so we brought the senator in to tell us what he’d like to see to ensure that his bill’s intent becomes reality. 

We’ve got a couple little newsy items sprinkled into the show, too. One notes the state Environment Department’s recent award of $13 million on contracts to map, test and treat salty, brackish water — another Lujan Grisham priority as she seeks to address New Mexico’s dwindling supply of the wet stuff. The other puts on the In Focus record the recent Senate confirmation of Republican former New Mexico Congressman Steve Pearce to lead the federal Bureau of Land Management.

And we close the show with a University of New Mexico Health Science Center hantavirus expert to lay out some facts about the horrifying illness — what with its recent appearance in international headlines via cruise ship exposures and all. 

So, that’s our show this week. Yes, we know the primaries are less than two weeks away. No, we do not intend to stop covering elections. But we hope you appreciate that we make time for other important stories, too — even as the aforementioned drone of Election Day continues its descent.

– Jeff Proctor, Executive Producer